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The improve your musicianship thread 2014


Chris

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I should probably try and learn how to use Ableton properly but the manual just makes my head hurt. I guess i'm a winging it kind of person.

 

This is my musical goal.

 

I wouldn't call it anything near 'musicianship' but yeah, I want to become good at using Ableton. I can generally do what I need to do but I'm sure I always go about it in the most roundabout way possible. I want to get to the point where I can just concentrate on actually creating music without having to google what option I need to press. Im pretty sad though and enjoy doing tutorials so this'll be my thing this year.

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Sight Reading means to read something for the first time.  When you pick up a book, you don't practise it, you read it at sight.  If you have spent enough time reading, you are like to come across words that you have seen before and your reading is likely to be fluent.  

 

The biggest stumbling block for adult learners is the length of time it takes to learn: we complain the kids want things right now and don't realise we want exactly the same thing.  The assumption amount adult learners is that it never took long to learn things as a child: that's just not true.  If you were to help a child, or adult for that matter, to learn to read, you would expect them to lack fluency.  You would set them reading that uses words that they are used to, stories that they like and offer support.  As a teacher, I offer students reading material that uses note combinations that they are used to, tunes that they like and I encourage them to read often: actually, my mantra is Sight Read Daily.  I would encourage those who are looking to improve their reading skills to Read Daily.  There is no quick fix.  When you were learning to read English, you did your reading homework and didn't think about the time that it took: incidently, you don't know all the words in English, but that doesn't spoil your enjoyment of reading.  Continual reading brings fluency.

 

Contact me if you would like help in improving your reading.  It's an enjoyable skill, not least because you will be able to do something that will either wow your friends, if they can't read, or give you something to share with friends who can.  

 

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As a teacher, I offer students reading material that uses note combinations that they are used to, tunes that they like and I encourage them to read often: actually, my mantra is Sight Read Daily.  I would encourage those who are looking to improve their reading skills to Read Daily.  There is no quick fix.  When you were learning to read English, you did your reading homework and didn't think about the time that it took: incidently, you don't know all the words in English, but that doesn't spoil your enjoyment of reading.  Continual reading brings fluency.

 

 

That's exactly how I'm approaching it.  I'm looking for the dots for tunes I know and tunes I want to play then reading through the sheet music and identifying the notes.  If I was just to grab a load of sheet music for tunes and music I didn't want to play I'd get bored very quickly and never get anywhere.

 

Also using online exercises to supplement that when I've got a few minutes spare.

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Great stuff Chris.  If you are playing guitar, stick to one position.  It's easy to get side-tracked, looking for notes in other positions.  Play all your tunes in one position and only leave that position if you need to access another note.  

 

Starting with doing it on the mandolin for now. Far too stuck in my ways on guitar plus there's only 4 strings to learn. Figure learning trad tunes in first position is a good starting point then can move onto more complex stuff and the guitar.

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Thought this might be relevant to folks' interests- in addition to trying to improve my ability as a musician this year, I'm also interested in developing my listening skills with view to becoming a little more involved in the engineering process with some of our self-released stuff.

Got sent a link to this free distance-learning short course online and it looks like anyone can sign up:

https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/critical-listening-for-studio-production

It looks fairly basic and mainly rooted in theory, but for a complete beginner like me, I'm hoping it might be beneficial!

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Thought this might be relevant to folks' interests- in addition to trying to improve my ability as a musician this year, I'm also interested in developing my listening skills with view to becoming a little more involved in the engineering process with some of our self-released stuff.

Got sent a link to this free distance-learning short course online and it looks like anyone can sign up:

https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/critical-listening-for-studio-production

It looks fairly basic and mainly rooted in theory, but for a complete beginner like me, I'm hoping it might be beneficial!

 

That's fantastic. Don't think I've got time to spare for it but it's brilliant that something like that is being offered for free.

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Thought this might be relevant to folks' interests- in addition to trying to improve my ability as a musician this year, I'm also interested in developing my listening skills with view to becoming a little more involved in the engineering process with some of our self-released stuff.

Got sent a link to this free distance-learning short course online and it looks like anyone can sign up:

https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/critical-listening-for-studio-production

It looks fairly basic and mainly rooted in theory, but for a complete beginner like me, I'm hoping it might be beneficial!

 

I'm going to make time for this.

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I spent a year learning music to grade 3 level, I wasn't amazing at it but learned enough to grasp the concept of it.

 

reading and writing was no problem, I found it hard applying my learning of notation to problems in work books. Things such rewriting a piece from simple time to compound time or vise versa, they would always throw in a piece with multiple rests and stuff to throw you off.

Wheel of harmony was my greatest kinda light bulb moment

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i know most musical concepts but what gets me is when your doing composing or arranging and having to write it in musical notation

 

Why don't you write it in guitar tab using software that will output as sheet music?  Think there's a few free ones that will do it for you.  Won't help you learn notation though.

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While studying music I used sibelius for this. You could write in tab, or play using a midi keyboard and it would notate as you went. You could also painstakingly input midi notes one by one if you couldn't play the keyboard. I'm sure there are more user friendly versions available now as I studied music 11 years ago now. 

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Thought this might be relevant to folks' interests- in addition to trying to improve my ability as a musician this year, I'm also interested in developing my listening skills with view to becoming a little more involved in the engineering process with some of our self-released stuff.

Got sent a link to this free distance-learning short course online and it looks like anyone can sign up:

https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/critical-listening-for-studio-production

It looks fairly basic and mainly rooted in theory, but for a complete beginner like me, I'm hoping it might be beneficial!

 

 

I have also signed up for this one too!

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